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Business is answer to prayer
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NEW BUSINESS: Jim and Amy Schneider show their new line of eyeglasses, Eyes of Faith. They are starting to market the line to independent eye-care professionals.
The couple want to give back, and children’s charities will benefit.
Like suddenly clear vision, the idea was there.
Jim Schneider of West Middlesex, Pa., even remembers the date it came to him — Sept. 28.
He was praying, he said, as he does every morning, when there it was — the idea for a faith-based, purpose-driven eyewear company.
The purpose? To sell enough eyeglasses to be able to donate 10 percent of gross sales, or $1 million a year, to children’s charities.
Schneider, who at the time was a partner in an insurance agency, Gilbert’s Insurance and Consulting in Sharon, Pa., ran upstairs to awaken his wife, Amy.
“I said, ‘I got a great idea,’” he said.
Amy, who had spent 15 years in a career as an optician and had helped a friend design his own line of eyewear for eight years, saw the vision too.
They didn’t waste any time, booking a trip “the next day” to a huge eyewear show in Las Vegas. They wanted to see if God was represented in the eyewear industry.
“The answer was a resounding ‘no,’” Jim said, so they decided to pursue the idea.
“We say, ‘Eyes of Faith was born in Sin City,’” he said.
The couple’s business is home-based at their condominium at the Oak Tree Country Club, and they have a Web presence at www.EyesOfFaithOptical.com. They are pursuing the venture full-time. Amy had quit her job with an eye doctor in Sharon a year-and-a-half ago because of health reasons, she said, and Jim resigned from the insurance agency in May.
With Amy drawing designs for the line and working with a design team at their supplier’s factory in China to bring it to life, the couple has been developing the Eyes of Faith brand identity. They now have 12 prototype frames ready in men’s and women’s styles, and their marketing started in earnest this week.
An “e-mail blast” Thursday to 16,000 eyewear professionals yielded a phone call from a buyer at a San Jose, Calif., business, Jim said. The woman did not even see any designs, he said, but knows she wants the brand.
The couple is counting on more faith-based sales, saying there is already a great deal of interest from the Christian community in what they’re doing.
They bought a stage sponsorship at Night of Joy, a Christian concert in Walt Disney World’s Hollywood Studios this coming weekend. Forty thousand people are expected at the concert over the two nights, Amy said. They’ll give out binoculars and T-shirts that sport the Eyes of Faith logo. While they’re there, they’ll also have a booth at a Christian-music broadcasters’ annual conference in Disney’s Coronado Springs resort. Through such marketing they hope to directly appeal to consumers, Amy said.
“We want to drive the demand,” Jim said. “We want the Christian community to go to their eyewear professionals and say ‘we want Eyes of Faith.’”
They also plan more e-mails, though not to chains such as Lens Crafters or Pearl Vision. The chains have their own lines and factories, Amy said. Instead, they are targeting independent eye-care professionals who are responsible for 65 percent of eyewear sales, Jim said.
They also are going back to where their venture was born — the eye-wear show in Las Vegas, called International Vision Expo West.
He’d told people there they would be back this year, ready to launch their own line, Jim said, and he was told in return they couldn’t do it.
“The process of starting a brand and launching a collection takes a year and a half,” Amy said.
On faith, they did it in six months.